There are two things that stood out about Ken Griffey Jr.: his picturesque swing and his picturesque smile. It wasn’t just his ability to hit and rob home runs on the field that stood out, but also how cool he looked while doing it. Griffey had a smile made for Instagram’s heart button, and his backwards hat-wearing ways led to a whole generation of fans to grow up playing with their cap turned backwards.
Given that Griffey’s cool image is such a large part of what made fans of the ’90s fall in love with “The Kid,” it would only be right for his Hall of Fame plaque to feature him with his backwards cap. It sounds like that just might happen.
Baseball Hall of Fame president Jeff Idleson said they would consider a backwards hat for “The Kid’s” plaque.
Jeff Idleson,President of the National Baseball Hall of Fame left open the possibility of Ken Griffey Jr. hat being on backwards on plaque
— Jim Bowden (@JimBowden_ESPN) January 7, 2016
The support for Griffey going into the Hall with a backwards cap grew, with even reigning NL MVP Bryce Harper chiming in.
Juniors ball cap has to be backwards on his plaque right? #HOF2016
— Bryce Harper (@Bharper3407) January 6, 2016
Griffey, who won AL MVP in 1997 and is sixth all time with 630 career home runs, received 437 of 440 votes (99.3 percent) to make it to Cooperstown. He was asked on a conference call Wednesday about the possibility of going into the Hall with his hat backwards.
“I haven’t really thought about the hat backwards,” Griffey said via the AP.
With all the talk about his backwards hat, you’re probably wondering: how did the habit of Griffey wearing the backwards cap even come about? His father shared it with the Tacoma News Tribune.
“When Junior would come into the (Reds’) clubhouse (in the 1970s),” Griffey Sr. recalled, “he would always come and get my hat.
“My hat was bigger than his head, so it would fall down over (his eyes) and he could never see when he was catching or throwing.
“So he just decided to turn it around and put it on backwards. He got used to doing that. He would turn it around backwards to play catch.”
It’s no surprise that the reason that a kid who at 19 hit 16 home runs in MLB began wearing a backwards hat because he was so young when he was around the game. The kid was a prodigy. It would only be right for his plaque to feature him in that backwards hat he was so strongly associated with.
MLB already seems ready for it:
Today, we all wear our caps backward. #HOF pic.twitter.com/YAqwNJlPmA
— MLB (@MLB) January 6, 2016
